Anita Awosusi, born in 1956 to Holocaust survivors, is a writer, musician and activist for the recognition of the victimisation of Sinti and Roma during the Third Reich.

A long-standing board member at the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg, Germany, she led the centre’s ‘Dialogue’ project, for which she organised exhibitions, worked on radio programmes and films, and published ground-breaking books that brought to light the deportations of Sinti and Roma and their victimisation in the concentration camps of the Third Reich.

As a musician, she developed the show ‘Rom Som – ich bin ein Mensch’ [I’m a Rom – I’m a human being], which features her own songs and poems with musical accompaniment and which she has performed all over Europe. Her husband, Hope Awosusi, and daughter, Tayo Awosusi, are professional musicians, too.

Anita Awosusi’s most recent book, Vater Unser, is an autobiography that explores her family’s experience of the Holocaust, particularly her father’s memories of the camps and the role that the victimisation of her parents during that time played and continues to play in her own life.

Bibliography

Awosusi, Anita. 2016. Vater unser. Eine Sintifamilie erzählt. Heidelberg: Verlag Regionalkultur.

Awosusi, Anita (ed.). 2000. Zigeunerbilder in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Heidelberg: Verlag Das Wunderhorn.

Awosusi, Anita (ed.). 1998. Stichwort: Zigeuner. Zur Stigmatisierung von Sinti und Roma in Lexika und Enzyklopädien. Heidelberg: Verlag Das Wunderhorn.

Awosusi, Anita (ed.). 1997. Die Musik der Sinti und Roma, Band 2: Der Sinti-Jazz. Heidelberg: Dokumentations- und Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Rom.

Awosusi, Anita und Krausnick, Michail. 1994. Abfahrt: Karlsruhe. Die Deportation der Pfälzer und Karlsruher Sinti. Dokumente und mündliche Erinnerung. »Bulletin trimestriel de la Fondation Auschwitz«, Jahrgang 1994, Nr. 44/45, pp. 97–111.